


Turbulent Minds

by Willow Mae (NelwynP)



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Depression, F/M, Modern AU, Songfic, bad childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29573850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NelwynP/pseuds/Willow%20Mae
Summary: If you come from a home where love isn't enough to make things work, it's understandable that you might be a bit jaded about your own prospects. Madge claims she doesn't want to date, to save herself from heartache. But what about the heartache of loneliness she already feels? Is the exquisite pain of love it worth opening up to someone?
Relationships: Kino Makoto/Nephrite
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Turbulent Minds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 Senshi/Shitennou Ficathon - Theme "Songfic"
> 
> This is based on the song ["To the Moon and Back" by Savage Garden](https://youtu.be/zD8KvL1aFNQ).

_She's taking her time making up the reasons  
_ _To justify all the hurt inside  
_ _Guess she knows from the smiles and the look in their eyes  
_ _Everyone's got a theory about the bitter on_ e

I have a scrapbook of all the postcards my father has sent to me. It acts like my own personal timeline of affection. Sometimes I only look at it once every few months, sometimes I can hardly go a week without a glance into my own heartbreak.

I started it when I was six years old. We took a family trip to Lake Itasca, and Dad spent the week prior visiting REI, Gander Mountain and Dick's Sporting Goods buying every supply we needed to camp and many more we didn't. I sang over 100 verses of “Oh Little Toad” on the drive up, Mom singing with me for the first twenty or so, then starting her own chorus of “Madgie, be quiet”. I caught fireflies in a milk jug while Dad struggled with our tent and Mom burned dinner. The KoA we stayed at had some beautiful postcards, and it was Mom's idea. Before we left, each of us wrote our favorite memory on the card and mailed it home. The intent was to continue the tradition for every vacation we took, but it never came through. Dad left the next year for a business trip, and never came back. I got a postcard on my birthday from Los Angeles – no apology, no explanation, just a Happy Birthday and I'm Thinking Of You. Mom threw it away, but I salvaged it and kept it under my pillow. When the next one came at Easter from “Bill's Bar” in Nevada and then another from Houston, I started the scrapbook. The postcards came regularly until I hit middle school, and by eighth grade my book was as full as it would ever get. Some days I contemplate ripping out all the empty pages in the back, but those are just as much a part of my story as the pages that are filled.

_They're saying  
_ _Mama never loved her much_

When it was just Mom and me, it was really more like just me. Mom didn't like me going out at night, or over to a friend's house, or even to school some days. She used to say I was my father's child, my fascination with the world frightened her. It didn't help that I had his green eyes and curly hair – my very existence reminded her of her loss. Her paranoia grew as I did and she became desperately attached. Sometimes I felt she did not love me, she just loved how I reminded her of Dad. Sometimes I felt she didn't even love that, that her anger outweighed her affection. Seeing how broken she was after Dad left, I decided I could never allow myself to love so deeply it would hurt. I grew up tough, I grew up strong and I grew up independent. I grew up alone.

_And daddy never keeps in touch  
_ _That's why she shies away from human affection_

When I was sixteen, I considered running away. I sat at the bus station until one in the morning, watching the Greyhounds come and go. I had nearly two hundred dollars in my pocket, but I was more frightened of going home than I was of the homeless people and night walkers that prowled the downtown area. I'm still not sure what convinced me to not get on a bus that night, but I didn't. Mom was in such a rage that I did not go to school for another week. When I was eighteen, I left home for good. I applied for student housing at the U of M and got a part time job with the state to help pay for my schooling. It wasn't my mother's fault that I left, at least so I told myself. She didn't see it that way and I rarely spoke to her since.

I made good friends at school. Friends who didn't know about my childhood, who wouldn't speculate on my quirks and idiosyncrasies. Melanie and Rachel are both in the business track, though Mel is more interested in commercial design aspects and the social side of things. She also has a penchant for setting people up on “business arrangements”, her version of blind dates that included a full personal resume and predetermined activities that she would set up to “best optimize results”. She even has her own webpage (that their design friend Andi whipped up), because as she stated with authority “those poor boys in the engineering track just don't have the time to meet people outside the classroom”. Melanie is always full of grandiose ideas.

_She can't remember a time  
_ _When she felt needed  
_ _If love was red then she was colour-blind_

I've had a few dates, but nothing that ever lasted long. Boys in high school weren't so much interested in me but in my body, and that was okay. Those kind of relationships never last long anyway, and with my background I've never had expectations for anything spectacular. There were the occasional boys who wanted to get to know me better, but I never realized until after the moments had come and gone. Melanie sought to set things straight with me, and even wrote up a (mostly fake) personal resume for me to trail on her site and see what I was missing. We all had a good laugh at that, but every time she approaches me with some semi-serious arrangement I decline. I've fended off enough blind dates that it is very easy for me to believe I am happy being single when all my friends are dating. It may have been true, for a while, but there are still nights when I wake up from dreams that are so vividly emotional that my very breath chokes in my lungs. Even after the images fade, those raw, painful feelings linger through the days that follow.

“You and me, Madge, we've got the same kind of disease,” Andi told me one day. She's the quiet, artsy type that you see on the street and wish you were. “Every time I pass someone, I can see them dreaming they're me. They get a look in their eyes, you know? They see my coveralls and colored hair and project all the dreams they gave up on into my body and it's the worst feeling in the world. It's hard enough being myself some times, I can't be other people on top of that. I can't stand it for more than a bit at a time, you know? That's why I'm careful with my friends, you guys see me for myself and I don't have to worry about your expectations. But the rest of the world … psht.” she threw up her hands.

“I'd be lying if I said I didn't ever wish I was you.” I replied with an apologetic smile. “Not all the time, but you always seem to have it together. I don't have many dreams to project onto you, but dude. I can see why people do it.”

“Oh give me a break! You of all people are the least of my worries. The disease thing, you know?” she waved her hand back and forth between us. “Okay so people don't project onto you, but you can feel it every time you walk in a room. How they speculate, and make up histories and project their own downfalls onto you. I capture their dreams, you their despair. Really girl, you've got it worse off. You're the Ophelia, the Desdemona, the tragic heroine. We got to hook you up or something, bring you back to earth.”

“Now you sound like Mel. I don't need a relationship. Do I really seem that depressed to you?” Her words stung, partly because I saw some truth in her raw language that I did not want to admit to.

“Not depressed, sweetheart. Tragic. Like you're waiting for a Prince Charming, and you're the one with expectations that no one can fill. Guys look at you and don't dare to dream they might have a chance, cause you've already made up your mind that they're no good. They know that.” Andi clasped my hand. “Sweetheart, I don't mean it like that. I mean that you're amazing and you deserve to have every inch of happiness. Sometimes that means lowering your standards a bit. I just don't like to watch you throw it away.”

_All her friends they've been tried for treason  
_ _And crimes that were never defined_

I laugh around the angry lump in my throat. “If I didn't know how much you cared you'd be hurting by now, fair warning.”

“Don't I know it. Well, I never claimed tact was a strong point. Come out with us again some time, or maybe I'll get Xander to bring some of his friends. I know they say don't date within your own circle, but you have to start somewhere right?”

_She's saying  
_ _Love is like a barren place  
_ _And reaching out for human faith  
_ _Is like a journey I just don't have a map for_

I have never been interested in going to the bars or clubs in the evening, which apparently is the only place that people my age meet anymore. The last few times I went out, it would be right as we're leaving that Mel would hiss in my ear “so and so was totally digging you tonight, why didn't you do anything?” and I would stare dumbfounded and clueless. Andi was right in some ways, I could accept that my sense of self-preservation would give off a 'leave me alone' vibe. But I don't do it intentionally. The last few outings were so disastrous I refused to go again.

I hide out at the zoo instead which is full of parents and grandparents and kids, but blissfully free of young men looking to get laid. I'm through with that part of my life, and would rather stay hitch-free than be in more meaningless relationships. I knew where they would end up, and I had no intention of letting myself fall into that trap. I would not turn into my mother, and I would not turn into my father. I wouldn't take any chances, and if that meant staying alone forever then so be it.

The volunteer at the bear cage didn't know of my resolve.

_But somewhere in a private place  
_ _She packs her bags for outer space  
_ _And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come_

I like watching the bears the best. There are three of them, all adolescent. Kenai is the middle colored one, and he likes to swim a lot. He goes back and forth in front of the glass and watches the people watching him. He'll nuzzle the glass and put his paw up to the kids who tap the glass. Haynes has a thing about sticks and is always chewing on one. When he's not, he wrestles with Kenai. Sadie, the girl, tends to roll her eyes at them in a very human “ugh, boys” way. It's always busy in the bear cage, but I like to take a seat near the back and watch for a few hours as the parents shuffle their kids through. It's as much about watching the people as it is watching the bears. The volunteers work their way through the exhibit answering questions and having props to help teach about the animals. I'd seen the plastic balls the bears had played with, to demonstrate how powerful and dangerous the animals behind the glass really are. They have bones to compare sizes of different bears, and claws to show how long and sharp they are. Today, the volunteer had a bear pelt and was offering it around.

“Look, it's almost the same color as your hair.” I was startled when he held the pelt to my head. “Yours has more red for sure, but the highlights are spot on.”

“Thanks?” I wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or not. What is the right way to respond to such an overture? I realized I'd seen this volunteer before, throughout some of the other exhibits. He was tall and kind of lanky, with a three o'clock shadow and long brown hair in a ponytail pulled through the zoo cap that all volunteers wear. The uniform shorts looked silly on his long, wiry legs, and the volunteer shirt was tight across his broad chest.

“You really like the bears, huh? I've seen you around a few times,” he admitted, offering the pelt to a pile of small hands. Apparently I was in this conversation whether I wanted to be or not.

“They're always the most active, still being so new and all I guess. I like the prairie dogs too.” I ran my hand along the fur in his hand, surprised by how soft it was at the tips compared to the coarseness near the skin. “Will they hibernate, when winter comes?”

He shook his head. “No, not a true hibernation. They'll sleep most of the time, but they will be getting up for food and the like. You ever think about volunteering, as you spend so much time here already?”

“It hadn't crossed my mind, really. I'm going to school at the moment, not much time for other things.”

“Really, what are you studying?”

“Botany, biology … the life sciences. Not sure what I'll do with it yet, but the work is interesting.”

“You could design habitats here, for one. There's got to be lots you can do with those degrees. I'm hoping to land a job here some day, so I'm getting in as many hours as possible. Listen, if you ever want to help out, come talk to me and I'll set you up. Name's Nelson Carter.” He held out his hand. I shook it.

“Madge Donnavan.”

“Good to meet you. I'm serious, Madge, come talk to me. I'll see if I can't hook you up with a shift feeding the babies or something.” He gave me a wink and a smile, and walked on to the next exhibit.

It never occurred to me to consider dating Nelson. Of course Melanie suggested it the moment I mentioned a new acquaintance, and Rachel scoffed at her for being frivolous and then demanded details herself. I liked Nelson because he was someone with similar interests, and he didn't flirt. I've always found flirting to be the most insincere form of courtship. He was just someone who I could talk to without feeling like there were any expectations. We didn't meet outside of the zoo, and most of our conversations revolved around the animals, but the more time I spent with him the more I realized I wanted to tell him things.

He explained how his interest in zoology started in the foster home he grew up in. The number of kids that came through the McNamara house invoked a small menagerie of pets – rabbits and turtles, birds and fish and dogs and cats all saw their time with the kids there. Nelson had the longest run with the McNamaras, who by his word were the nicest of the foster parents he lived with and he made sure to be quiet and good to stay with them as long as possible. He didn't say why he had lived in foster care, but from the hints I gathered over the ensuing months of conversation that his mother was in some sort of care herself.

Maybe it was bad of me, but I felt a sense of freedom at finding someone whose childhood was as positively fucked up as mine. It made it easy to be myself, and unguarded in a way I haven't been in years. Andi told me my ‘heroine aura’ had significantly less ‘tragic’ in it, but I refused to believe it had anything to do with Nelson.

Until a year later, when he asked me out officially and I actually said yes.

_She's saying_   
_I would fly you to the moon and back if you'll be my baby_   
_Got a ticket for a world where we both belong_   
_So would you be my baby_

I understand now why my parents reacted so strongly to one another. I was wrong to think that I could escape the emotions that were born in me. But I have the advantage of learning from their mistakes, and Andi is right. Everyone deserves a shot at happiness, and this time I won't turn away.


End file.
